


Self-starter

by semnai



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mentions of genocide, Missing Scenes, Post-Episode: s02e17 The Honorable Ones, Rebels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 00:58:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10525572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semnai/pseuds/semnai
Summary: Kallus asks those hard questions about the Empire's actions, and comes to term with the answers.Alternative title: "Kallus Grows a Conscience"





	

**Author's Note:**

> I finally caught up with Rebels, watching the whole of Season 3 in like three days. This fic is here to help me vent some of my Kallus feelings.

Kallus never intended to take Zeb’s words to heart, but the things Zeb had said to him on Bahryn ate away at the back of his mind like acid. Why were all the Geonosians gone? Did the Empire really have something to do with it? What else had they done that he wasn’t aware of? These things shouldn’t matter to him, he tried to tell himself. They never mattered before. Why was he letting what Zeb said bother him so much? _He_ was a rebel, an enemy to the Empire.

After the third night in a row of being unable to sleep however, he cursed his restless mind and finally gave into its demands. Kallus picked up the datapad that rested on a shelf next to his bed, glimpsing his tired face reflected in the glossy screen before it lit up. He initially tried to pull up old records, transmissions, intelligence, anything at all related to the Geonosians. All that he had access to, even with his ISB clearance codes, was the little information confirming what he already knew, that the planet of Geonosis was now uninhabited, and nothing else. The information he had leaked to the Rebel intelligence to set up the ambush at Geonosis was true, the Empire had been building something over the planet, but again he had no idea what. He only knew what he had been told: that the project wasn’t there anymore, and of course as always, nothing more. What he had previously seen as a perfect set-up to draw the rebels in was now frustrating him beyond measure. He was an Imperial Intelligence agent. Why didn’t he have these answers?

The rational part of his brain, the part of him that helped him excel in the Imperial Academy and rise so high in the ranks as an ISB officer, reminded him that the Empire was expansive, and it provided order in systems throughout the galaxy. With so many moving parts, it was imperative to not have data available to all. That would be a logistical nightmare, and would increase the likelihood of leaks getting out to people like the rebels he had fought for years now. It was a security matter that important data be hidden to all but a select few. He should just trust the Empire that those higher up knew what they were doing.

Just days ago, this would have been enough for him. He would have accepted this without a second thought and moved on to planning his next move on how to capture the rebels. But now… Kallus couldn’t put a finger on why but it just wasn’t enough for him anymore. It’s like he had been shown that the picture he viewed at all his life was actually a puzzle with a missing piece. With all his intelligence training, he knew when something just didn’t feel right. The Geonosians couldn’t have just exterminated themselves. They wouldn’t have woke up one morning and left their homeworld. The fact remained that that planet had been the site for a top-secret Imperial project and now the project was gone and so were the Geonosians.

Kallus sighed. He was at an impasse. He wanted, no _needed_ , to know the truth. He apparently wasn’t going to sleep until he did. But to get the truth would mean obtaining unauthorized information, which would be… rebellious. Either he break protocol, or just face that he could keep doing his job, never questioning why things were the way they were, and trust the Empire was doing its best to restore order to the Galaxy, for the good of Galaxy.

Kallus leaned back and banged his head against the wall in frustration. He was trained in intelligence. There was only one choice.

Splicing and hacking were not his specialties, but he did know a thing or two about it. Enough to know his datapad wasn’t enough. He would have to connect the datapad to a main Imperial computer port and upload the information if he really wanted to find out the truth. 

He would have to do this carefully, especially if he didn’t want his efforts to be discovered. He honestly hoped he would find nothing. Perhaps the Geonosians tore themselves apart through Civil War or there was a disease. Yes, he told himself, there could be a totally rational explanation for this, something not related to the Empire, and so they didn’t feel like it was worth reporting. But then that other, new voice in his head wanted to know why it felt like the Empire was hiding it.

Using his datapad, he pulled up the route that Admiral Konstantine set for the Destroyer. It appeared they were heading directly back to Lothal, where there would be several terminals within the main Imperial base that he would be able to access his information from. With a smirk, Kallus pulled up the officers at these system computer terminals, and picked out a period when the most incompetent personnel would be on duty. No need to make this more difficult than it needed to be. With that finalized, he once again checked the route. They would be arriving out of hyperspace in the Lothal system in 3 standard hours, which gave him just enough time to maybe at least lay down and figure out what story he was going to spin to make this convincing.

\----------------------------------------

Lothal’s moons looked down upon him like watchful eyes. Kallus tried to ignore the guilt and anxiety twisting around in his stomach as he boarded the Lambda-class shuttle to travel back to the Star Destroyer. He held the datapad tightly in his hands, keeping his face a mask of apathy and calm. He couldn’t afford to make any mistakes, especially since he was so close to hopefully answering some questions. He had gotten the data with no problems whatsoever, and had managed to disguise the hack to look as if it originated from a completely different sector. The personnel at the system computer terminal he had chosen had practically encouraged the data theft, giving him space when he asked for it and did not question how unusual it was for him to be there. Even as an ISB agent, everything he needed for his missions was always handed to him, or accessible via a datapad or through the main databanks in whatever Star Destroyer he was stationed on.

The Lambda-class shuttle landed in the main hanger, wings folding up before the access ramp lowered. He forced himself to breathe in measured deep breaths to slow his racing heart and walk at a normal pace through the hanger, through the hallways and lifts, to his quarters. Once in his room, he sat down on his bed, briefly glancing over to the glowing meteor that was still sitting on the shelf.

With a deep breath, his hands _definitely_ not shaking, Kallus turned the datapad on, and began to scroll through the files he pulled. He tapped on the Geonosis file first. While hacking into the system, he had been baffled to discover that there were no files on whatever the Empire had been constructing over Geonosis, meaning that it was so top secret that its information had to be on separate databanks.

His blood ran cold as he read through the file. Sterilization they called it. A population of approximately 100 billion had been _sterilized_ by Imperial chemical weapons. The whole file referred to everything in precise, exact language. What should have read as a eulogy or a lament was written in the manner one would for protocols in emptying the trash compactor. The order had been signed by the Emperor himself, and carried out by the Imperial Weapons division under Tarkin.

He pulled up another file, citing the reasons for the leveling of an Outer-Rim city. A whole group of memos detailing daily fatality rates of Wookies in the labor camps at the spice mines of Kessel. Manifests of the shipments of Imperial slaves across the Empire. It went on. File after file describing in precise terms exactly what he was complicit in, what he had assisted with, and what the actual outcomes had been and what would have been when the Rebels had thwarted him. He thought back to the first time he had met those rebels and the Wookies they had freed from the Empire, and for the first time felt an odd sense of relief.

For over an hour he read through the information he had stolen, his hands clutching the datapad tightly. An overwhelming feeling of anger, disbelief, and something like betrayal flooded through him. He was angry at himself for being so blind, so willfully blind. And for the first time in his life, he was angry at the Empire for its actions. He had known that some of these activities—Kallus winced at his own use of the word. He had known that these atrocities had occurred, but to see the lack of justification, the lack of remorse, or any hint of even desiring to do things differently was shocking to him. The Empire he witnessed the creation of at the end of the chaotic Clone Wars, that he had learned about at the Academy, that he actively served was one for order. Kallus had seen himself what they were fighting against to establish order when his men had been cut down helpless next to him during his first assignment while he could do nothing to save them. But this… this was a whole different monster.

Kallus felt like his whole perspective on everything that had happened to him, everything he had seen in his time serving the Empire, had shifted, tilted on an axis, and now he could see straight. The grand scale of this manipulation, sowing of fear to achieve compliance was something that felt so utterly wrong to him. This isn’t what he had believed in, what he had vowed to uphold.

And when he thought back to his own actions, everything he had done since he had become an ISB agent for the Empire, like the massacre of the Lasat, he felt dizzy and sick. It’s like his mind couldn’t match his own memories with what he was reading in these reports. He looked up from the datapad, staring at the dark Imperial gray wall in front of him, wishing his mind was just as blank. He shook his head, before finally looking at the time. It had been two standard hours since he had gotten back from Lothal. That means he was due to check in with the Admiral in a half standard hour.

Kallus threw the datapad aside, lowering his head into his hands with a sigh. What was he going to do now? With everything he knew, would he still be able to do his job? He had to though, didn’t he? What other choice did he have? This was his life. This was all he knew. He didn’t mean anything by his actions, he was just following orders.

Even in the sanctity of his own mind, the thoughts were bitter and rang false. That other, new voice in his head whispered to him that he did have a choice. He didn’t have to keep following orders, or at least he could do it on his own terms.

Kallus shook his head, standing up. He retrieved the datapad from his bed, and this time threw it on the floor, before smashing it with his boot several times. Kallus picked up the pieces and disposed of them down the small garbage shoot in his quarters. With the evidence of his small insubordination gone, he thought he would feel some measure of relief, but it did not come.

He threw some cold water onto his face at the sink, uncertainty washing over him like a wave. He had never before felt so directionless, and it was not a feeling he was fond of. He needed purpose and now… he felt lost. Sighing again, Kallus finally left his room for the bridge to report in for duty, his face a perfect mask despite all the tumultuous emotions still roaring through his mind.

\----------------------------------------

“Agent Kallus! There you are. We have an assignment for you.” Admiral Konstantine walked towards Kallus, handing him a datapad.

Kallus accepted it, nodding his head slightly in acknowledgment.

“Our forces have captured a rebel down near the town of….” The Admiral frowned, pausing to consult at his own datapad.  “Ah yes, Jalath. We need you to go down to the planet and question the prisoner for any information he may have on his fellow rebels. All information on the capture can be found on the datapad. I look forward to the report on your success.” Immediately after finishing giving orders, the Admiral had already turned away from him to address another officer on the bridge.

“Yes, Admiral,” he automatically said to deaf ears, before turning on his heel to head towards the hanger where he knew the shuttle would be waiting for him.

\----------------------------------------

The shuttle settled on the landing pad in Jalath, and Kallus stepped outside, squinting into the now risen sun, before walking back into the sterile white light of the town’s small Imperial detention facility. He followed the Stormtroopers to a cell door. He paused for a moment and looked each of the troopers in turn, as if looking for any hint of their intentions or thoughts on the rebel activity they handled daily. What did they think of their occupation of this town, of this planet, and of this system? Did they truly feel they were restoring order to the galaxy? Kallus remembered the curfews in place, with harsh penalties if they were not obeyed, and the food shortages he heard ordinary citizens complain about before Stormtroopers kicked them down. No wonder people were rebelling. It was almost surprising that more weren’t, if not for the fear that the Empire had cast down upon the systems under its control.

With that, he pressed a button and the cell’s door smoothly slid open. Kallus stepped down into the cell, and the door slid closed behind him, leaving him in near darkness. He looked at the rebel restrained to a table for a moment, meeting the man’s fearful eyes, before glancing back down at his datapad. This man was someone he did not recognize and had not previously been identified as a rebel. That could only mean that the rebel activity was growing on Lothal, said a voice, which sounded suspiciously like Garazeb Orrelios, in the back of his mind. More people were getting fed up with the Empire. Had he ever before stopped and considered why?

The man was in his mid 40’s. Human, dark skinned, with short, dark brown hair. Probably spent his whole life on this backwater Outer-rim planet. Kallus felt like he could see it all before him. The man probably had a significant other, maybe children. Extended family, grandparents, cousins, friends. Everything he cared about was on this small, insignificant planet. This rebel would do anything to protect those he cared about, as Kallus had seen before with the rebels on the Ghost. The biting feeling of envy clawed at him. Back on his homeworld, he had nothing. The rebels had everything compared to him, but also had so much to lose.

It was laughable really, these regular, ordinary people standing up to the will and might of the Empire. But, Kallus realized with a jolt, who else would? The Jedi were gone; the armies of the Republic had become those of the Empire. Who else would protect them? They were doing the best they could with what they had.

 “I won’t tell you anything,” the man said resolutely after another minute of silence, barely a waver in his voice.

Kallus looked away from the datapad, back up at the rebel. “So you do not contest the Empire’s charges against you that you have willfully engaged in rebel activity and are a traitor to the Empire?” It felt like a rehearsed line of someone else’s script.

The man laughed; it sounded broken and hollow. “What would be the point even if I did? Nothing I say would ever make a difference.”

And the man was right about that, Kallus thought grimly. He had thrown out the idea of a trial and prisoners being treated fairly to Zeb just days ago, but that wasn’t true and he knew it. No one was ever treated fairly in the Empire.

It would be around this time that Kallus would start the interrogation process, which, if he was frank with himself, involved significant torture. But he couldn’t do that, not anymore. Not to this man who had people he cared about, who was only fighting to protect them and ensure a future free of tyranny.

As he stood there, hesitating on how to proceed, a resounding boom and then crash rang out in the complex, and the building shook. Kallus started at the crash, before looking back to the prisoner. The man had raised his head, looking towards the direction of the crash, eyes now wide and hopeful. Immediately, another much closer explosion once again shook the building, cracking one of the walls. Kallus could hear shouts in the hallway, and the sounds of blaster fire. He glanced back up to where the surveillance feed monitored the room and saw that it was completely out. Kallus took a deep breath, his mind finally set. He stepped forward, ignoring the man’s flinch, and undid the restraints.

The man looked shocked as he quickly scrambled up off the table, eyeing him with suspicion. Kallus didn’t care; he would be suspicious of himself too if their positions were reversed.

“Go, get out of here now before reinforcements arrive,” Kallus said, his voice low.

The man made a few steps to the door, his hand outstretched to open it.

“Wait!” he said, with a sudden idea. “Here.” Kallus pulled his blaster out of his holster, flipping it to stun. “Shoot me and then use it help you escape.”

The sounds outside the cell had grown louder, and Kallus couldn’t tell who was winning.

Clearly confused, but grateful, the man accepted the blaster.

“Thank you,” the man said, holding up the blaster.

Kallus felt a cold wave of energy, and then nothing.

\----------------------------------------

Kallus rubbed at his neck, and grimaced at the pain his chest where the stun blast had hit, and in his upper back where he must have landed against the wall hard.

“Hm.” Admiral Konstantine was looking over the shoulder of one of his bridge officers at their output screen, seemingly ignoring Kallus.

Finally, after several more minutes, he acknowledged Kallus. “Agent. I hear you had some… issues with the Lothal rebels.”

“Yes, sir,” Kallus said. “I believe these rebels are separate from those that operate out of the ship the Ghost. I did not recognize the man that had been captured.”

The Admiral looked contemplative, or at least as much as was probably possible for him, Kallus supposed. “But the rebel is not in our custody anymore, I hear? His rebel friends led an attack on our facilities, and rescued him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And this was all before you could begin interrogating him.”

“As you will read in my report.”

The two men stared at each other. Kallus honestly could not make a guess to what the Admiral was thinking; all he could focus on was how much he just wanted to get back to his quarters.

The Admiral finally relented, and nodded. “Send it to me within the hour. I look forward to reviewing your assessment. Dismissed.”

\----------------------------------------

Kallus stumbled into his quarters, removing his armor and kicking off his boots. With a groan, he collapsed on the bed.

“Well, as Zeb would say, karabast. What am I going to do now?” One thing was clear: he couldn’t continue how he had been. Everything was different now. Kallus ran his hands through his hair. But leaving here also felt impossible. This was his life. He thought back to the man he had helped today, and the budding feeling of hope it had given him. Even in this position, maybe _especially_ in this positon, he could help people. He had intelligence that the rebels needed, and if he stayed he could continue to pass on information to assist in their efforts and save lives. After everything he had done to support the Empire, suddenly it felt like it was his duty to do this. It wouldn’t erase or forgive all the terrible things he had done and had been complicit in, but it was something. It was a start. He was now beginning to understand that the Empire had to be stopped, and this was the small part he could play in it.

However, he knew being a spy was not something he could walk away from with no consequences. Once he started this, he would be committed. But tonight, he didn’t want to think about what that outcome would be if the Empire discovered his actions, or even how the rebels would receive him. Tonight he would focus on strategizing on how he will contact the rebels and maintain his cover.

Kallus picked up the meteor rock next to his bed, letting its light and warmth wash over him. Tomorrow was a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is the first fic I've written in a long time, and my first ever Star Wars fic, but I just had to write it. I've also never done a fic with so little dialogue so this was an experience for me.
> 
> While writing this fic, I thought up the headcanon that he started providing the Rebels small bits of information before Ahsoka disappeared. So, after his intel proved extremely accurate and helpful, Ahsoka arranged a meet-up with Kallus and snuck back on to Lothal to talk. Basically she wanted make sure this was for real, and that he was committed to being an informant for them. They talk, and she senses that his intentions are good and he actually really wants to help the rebels. Ahsoka, as Fulcrum and head of the Rebel intelligence network, is the one who gives him the code phrase and designation as another Fulcrum.
> 
> I may do another ficlet about that. I also would like to do something post-Zero Hour. I think I would make it as part of a series. Hopefully there would be some interest in that?


End file.
